Long-distance travel, corona infections, core team: After the negative headlines of the past few months, the players and those responsible at FC Bayern should really have known better.
The game takes place. At least according to the current status. The Munich health department has spared FC Bayern the team quarantine before the second half of the Bundesliga start against Borussia Mönchengladbach on Friday (from 8.30 p.m. in the live ticker at t-online).
If the ninth corona case, defender Alphonso Davies, were infected with the Omikron variant, the whole team might have had to go into quarantine for 14 days after the Canadian had trained with the team on Monday.
Then the German Football League would have had to cancel the game long ago – and probably the next Bayern game too.
The statutes state: As soon as a club has fewer than 15 players eligible to play (including at least one goalkeeper), the association can approve a request to cancel a match.
Now FC Bayern is getting a team together and can also play. Even if with difficulty and adversity (read here: This is what the Bayern team could look like).
Is it fair to play the game? I think so. Is that a distortion of competition? No.
Quite simply because FC Bayern has now committed to the event and coach Julian Nagelsmann has said: “I’m not one to cry around. […] We still have an eleven with a lot of world-class players. “And:” I’ll take care of the challenge, but also an exciting task. “
Which also suggests that the game is taking place: FC Bayern is to blame for the precarious situation.
Of course, it can always happen that two or three players get infected with Corona. A walk to the bakery around the corner can be enough.
But I still say: it must not happen with this frequency. 9 infections in 23 players are really blatant. They are also incomprehensible to me and not a coincidence.
Like many people in Germany, I could have flown around in world history over Christmas and the New Year. But I have decided to take the path of reason, to minimize the risk and to stay at home with the family.
Although it’s been a couple of years since my active career.
This makes me all the more lacking in understanding that the active players at FC Bayern think they have to spend their recreational vacation in the Maldives, Dubai or Senegal. Especially because it’s about ten days.
Of course, as a player, I can live just as secluded there as at home in Munich. But: It is not a new finding that every trip and every trip increases the risk of infection in the first place. Of course, I meet more people than when I stay at home.
It is also a fact that there are sometimes zero infections at other clubs and that players from other clubs were less far away. With nine infections, as FC Bayern I can’t say that everyone behaved correctly and in an exemplary manner.
On the contrary. Each of these players endangers the success of the club – and, by the way, its reputation. Not just in Germany, but in European football.
This is all the more astonishing when you consider the headlines with which FC Bayern has already caused a stir in recent months. It was primarily about the vaccination skepticism of five players, above all national player Joshua Kimmich. It was about his quarantine, then about his infection – and then about the long-term consequences.
All of these were definitely not good headlines for Bavaria. And if the players themselves are not able to recognize that, at least the top of the club around President Herbert Hainer, CEO Oliver Kahn and sports director Hasan Salihamidžić must do everything to prevent it from continuing like this.
Those responsible are definitely pissed off now, but it is their own fault.
Was there an appeal? So far, no one at Bayern has made a clear statement on this. But even if there was an appeal, it clearly didn’t reach the players.
A travel ban is not permitted under labor law. Still, it must be possible to appeal to reason with enough force that the players stay at home. Of course it is a question of who is conveying this and how.
When I imagine Uli Hoeneß coming into the dressing room and telling me as a player that I shouldn’t go on vacation to the Maldives – then I certainly don’t resist if I don’t want to jeopardize my professional future.
Nowadays, according to contracts, players are sometimes prohibited from doing dangerous leisure activities such as skiing so that they do not get injured. In a pandemic, travel, especially long-distance travel, is also one of these dangerous leisure activities for me.
That is why it must be possible to prevent the players from doing so in the future. Depending on how long the pandemic will be with us, travel bans should also be enforceable.
Did all Bayern players behave wrongly? Of course not. But definitely far too many – including national and leading players and top performers.
Once again, Thomas Müller stands out because he has decided against a long-distance journey. Even if he says: “Just locking up at home is also nothing. I haven’t stayed at home now because I wanted to do something much better than my colleagues.”
The consequences for Bavaria should not be underestimated. Joshua Kimmich got infected as an unvaccinated person in November. Nevertheless, you can see from his example how long this can tear a player out of the game. He played his last game two months ago, on November 6th.
The currently infected players have not played a game for two and a half weeks due to the winter break. If you are unable to train for another week or two because of your infection, you will quickly not have completed one for more than a month.
That means: you need time to find your rhythm again and to get to one hundred percent efficiency.
The victim is not a player – but coach Julian Nagelsmann. He can’t work on the weaknesses with the team, really can’t train and rehearse anything. And yet he will be measured by success at the end of the season.
In the summer, nobody will talk about why the start of the second half of the season may have been bumpy. It will only be a question of whether he won the tenth championship in a row with Bayern and was in the Champions League at least up to the semi-finals or finals.
It is an honor to Nagelsmann that he protected his players at the press conference before the game. He said: “I am not a child educator. I am a football coach. We have players who are of age. There is no option, unless there is a law, to forbid vacation. And there is also mental relaxation. If Dayot Upamecano his If you want to visit family in Senegal, I won’t forbid my friend to visit his family in Dasing either. “
I don’t believe that one hundred percent for him, however. Nagelsmann doesn’t say what he thinks, of course. He, too, is definitely angry at the players who frivolously jeopardize success – and could even bring momentum to the championship fight again.
Borussia Dortmund has already written off the title after the last game before the winter break (2: 3 against Hertha) – but now only two infected players with Dan-Axel Zagadou and Marius Wolf.
If BVB wins its games silently in January and Bayern suffers from the consequences of the isolation, Dortmund can bring it back.
And here, too, it is true: FC Bayern would be to blame if it came to that.
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